Stock Chartist

Commentary and recommendations about the stock market, sectors and individual stocks from a chartists perspective. Observations are based on the belief that "at their core, fundamentals are subjective but momentum is fact."

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January 20th, 2011

I don’t know about you but I had a truly horrible day today. The jolt my portfolio took made it feel almost like having been rear-ended by a careless driver. I looked for explanations. Some commentators attributed today’s pullback to the poor housing numbers, others to the disappointing earnings reports from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, others point to the valuation of Apple in the wake of Steve Jobs absence and, finally, still others questions the valuation of those booming “cloud computing” stocks.

Yes, we should have been looking up in the sky …. not at the clouds but at the moon. Full moons are traditionally associated with weirdness (werewolves, vampires, etc.). What I didn’t hear mentioned as an explanation of today’s tech smashup was the fact that it’s a full moon tonight and the end of its Waxing Phase, usually a bearish period in the Lunar Cycle.

Had it gone much further along the lines of the NASDAQ, today’s decline would have almost carried the index back below 1270, back into negative territory for the phase. Today’s 1% decline nearly saved the day and the market would have had another 2%+ up phase.

The Lunar Cycle has been more reliable during the Waning phase with 16 up periods and only 3 down for a 84.2% batting average — as it should be. Let’s hope that there’s a least one more bullish Waning period left before the market gets the Waxing phase right on its way into a interim market correction.

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Fear not, all my postings relative to the Lunar Cycle are tongue in cheek. I clearly don't put any stock in the Lunar Theory but its fun playing with those who do.

Last Friday, in Approaching the First Objective, I wrote "My guess right now is that the correction from 1325 will be about 6-7% back down to no further than 1245-1250 and that it will be fairly sharp and quick."

Unfortunately, the correction caught me off-guard and started yesterday a bit earlier than I thought at 1294 rather than 1320. With enough investors seeing this correction to buy stocks they missed earlier, there should be a bounce soon and an opportunity for others to then take some profits and generate cash.